Pictures I Wish I'd Taken

Going back and looking over all the photos I took on my trip, I'm finding that there are a lot of pictures I don't have that I wish I'd taken.

Everyday Things

Vending machines! They are everywhere in Japan and I never took the time to photograph a single one. I'd heard about them before my trip, but the reality of there always being a vending machine within sight just didn't register until I was there for a few days. Then they became so commonplace that I started ignoring them. I regret not having snapped a few while waiting for a bus or something.

For those of you who don't know, Japanese vending machines fall into four categories. In order of prevalence they are: beverage machines; cigarette machines; phone card dispensers; and snack machines. I've heard about all sorts of other machines that sell everything from magazines to used women's panties, but I didn't see any of those things on my trip.

The beverage machines are very different from those we have here in the states. On average I'd say they sell at least twenty different items. Mostly cold drinks, but also hot ones and from the same machine. In order to do this the machines have to be huge, but they can often be found stuck in tiny little spaces that would normally go unused elsewhere. An average machine might dispense beer, soda (they had Coke Zero!), tea, flavored and unflavored water, sports drinks, juice, coffee and soup. That's all in the same machine, folks!

There's a whole list of other things I wish I had pictures of too. Like the plastic food outside the restaurants below Kyoto station. The automated bus stop signs that display where the next bus is and how long you can expect to wait. The Asian style toilet I had to use at the remote mountain rest stop on the way to Gero. The inside of a crowded train car or bus. The rows upon rows of onigiri lined up in the cold case at the combini. The list goes on and my memory card is only half full. What was I thinking?

People Pictures

I wish I'd taken more pictures of people. It's so easy to get Japanese people to take your picture that I forgot to ask them if I could take their's as well. Specifically I wish I'd taken pictures of the station attendants at Nagoya-eki who helped (or didn't help) me when I missed the last bullet train. I'd also like to have a picture of the three high school girls who were taking the survey outside Ginkaku-ji. Those are wonderful memories and I wish I had pictures to go with the stories.

I have a picture I took while waiting for a bus in Kyoto of a man working in a little shop making traditional grass floor mats called tatami. Looking at it now, I wish I'd taken the time to cross the street and talk to him. Maybe gotten a few close-ups of him and the mats he was making. It certainly would have been more interesting than going to the Manga Museum and finding it closed.

What it really boils down to is this; I need to loosen up and spend more time interacting with the people and places I visit. Tourism makes it so easy to walk around in a foreign place and never really touch anything. It's like being encased in a soap bubble, everything around you looks bright and shiny, but all you can smell is soap. I want my travels to be enlightening and that means seeing new places for what they truly are.

I want to meet people and see what they do every day that makes their part of this world so much different from my own. I want to discover what they have in common with me so that I will always know we are both human at the core. And I want to bring these enlightening things home with me so I can share them with the world in pictures and stories. That won't happen if the camera just hangs around my neck like so much bling.